Navigating Locomotion and Form-shifting Technologies in Age-Friendly Smart Cityscapes: West Bengal in Focus

“Urban” and “peri-urban” neoliberal dynamics are deeply rooted in an anthropocentric-cornucopian faith in technology and the free market and interconnected by digital matrixes. Ageing in the smart city can be isolating. The smart city can be an isolated environment for navigating Ageing. Planners and architects rarely consider the elderly, individuals with limited mobility, and children when creating plans and structures. The paper states that this hampers the aging populations participation in community life, leading to isolation, loneliness, making street-based activities such as walking risky, and promotes unhealthy, sedentary lifestyles and lifestyle-related disorders. The technologies of locomotion (elevators and escalators) that have been installed to address the “risks” of navigation in the urban spaces, however, also exclude and restrict the mobility of the elderly and the infirm. This chapter draws upon ethnographic accounts of the “aging population” residing in Kolkata city and peri-urban areas adjacent to it, as well as Siliguri and its neighboring peri-urban spaces in the state of West Bengal. The purpose of this investigation is to look at the lived encounters of senior citizens within the urban design and its ecosystem and the connected issues of ease of access, navigation, visibility, and inclusivity within the smart urban landscapes.